The Ephemeral Scrapbook — Edition 2025-04

👤 Personal

1️⃣ My "other" personal blog (a French-language blog) is now officially live. Many of my closest friends know about it as I shared the news on my Facebook account (oh, the irony!). I got a few positive feedback. The most important thing to remember is to keep doing what I like: sharing thoughts and observations while experiencing and exploring the physical and digital world. I'll see where it goes. 2️⃣ The dark forest image (from Unsplash) as this edition’s header image, is on purpose as I'm trying to illustrate the current era we are forced to enter in. The United States are entering into a commercial fight with us Canadians, for no valid reason. It will mark a new dark era between the US and Canada. I hope it won’t last beyond 2028.

🗺️ Discoveries

1️⃣ Greg Morris, a blogger that I follow on Micro.blog, started developing a client for Micro.blog. I didn't know he was into programming (in addition to photography, blogging and podcasting). I'm curious to see how it evolves and if it ever sees the light of the day. I'm okay with more client choices for services like Bluesky and Micro.blog. 2️⃣ Manuel Moreale shared a table of blogging platforms for those looking for a home for their writings. I know about WordPress, Blot, Ghost, Write.as, Medium, and Micro.blog. 3️⃣ Like many people this week, I discovered the DeepSeek AI app. I tried it once. I'm uncomfortable with the fact that DeepSeek is hosted in China: DeepSeek AI avoids answering 85% of prompts on ‘sensitive topics’ related to China. I'm even more uncomfortable. I'll pass for now. Try it for yourself.

📖 Reading

1️⃣ Here is a good one from Riccardo Mori about an interview with Don Norman, a prominent figure in the human-computer interaction field. The interview took place in 1995, but as Mori emphasizes, many things Don Norman said are still valid today, if not more accurate. I studied many of Don Norman’s papers in the early nineties while studying user interface design for my master’s degree. 2️⃣ In the next edition of the Ephemeral Scrapbook, this section will probably be removed and morphed into all the remaining ones. Why? Because each edition of this newsletter is based on my reading, I don't see the need for a dedicated section for my readings. What do you think?

“Every new thing that I add to my website works to regain my internet presence away from companies that do not have my interests at heart. And I will avoid future problems like a company deciding to put login walls or paywalls in front of my content. Or putting Nazi content beside mine. I can avoid all of that by self-publishing.” — Louie Mantia

“The internet is now five websites owned by three people and all of them are awful” — Unknown source

👨🏻‍💻 Writing

1️⃣ I wish I had written the following blog post from Manuel Moreale because it closely resonates with my thoughts on having blogs. 2️⃣ This week, I looked at my current writing ideas and made some cleanup. I dropped a few ideas not worth pursuing. I've been trying to focus more in recent years, which is part of the process. Having a clearer view of what is essential for me as a blogger is not only helpful but mandatory. I shared this thought about that on my blog.

🌄 Photography

1️⃣ Here's an interesting video from a photographer who quit his job to do just that: photography. If this is something you are thinking of doing, watch this informative video, if not inspiring. 2️⃣ Is Glass, the photo-sharing service, a social network or not? According to one of his founders, the answer is an official "yes.” He came to this conclusion after reading an article about the launch of Mozi, another social networking app. People on Glass are passionate about photography, can show appreciation or comment on other people's work, and connections are made. I guess those are some of the attributes required to become more "social.” 3️⃣ Following MacRumors photo and video tests between the iPhone 16 Pro Max and Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, I'm happy to report that I still prefer iPhone photos over Samsung's. 4️⃣ Another great discovery on Glass this week. I fell in love with this winter image. And this guy, with a rather spooky style!

Sharing an Image Collection With Friends and Family — A Lesser Known Approach

Exploring practical and secure ways to share photos with friends and family, while balancing convenience, privacy, and user interaction.

Numeric Citizen SpaceJF Martin

“The most important asset for a photographer is time”.

🍎 Apple

1️⃣ If all goes according to the (new) plans, Siri might get a fix for real this time. 2️⃣ With iOS 18.3 and macOS 15.3, Apple Intelligence (still in beta mind you) is turned on by default on supported devices and language. Why? It's baffling to see Apple make this move. 3️⃣ If you want to see where the Vision Pro’s future might lead, consider looking back at the history of the MacBook Air, as Om Malik did in a recent article. 4️⃣ Fifteen years of iPad. Time flies — another great blog post by Om Malik for the occasion. For me, the iPad remains a great device in my digital landscape. Surprisingly, I share many similar iPad use cases with Mr. Malik: photography and travel (on the plane or at the hotel for a short trip). 5️⃣ Are you looking forward to the iOS 18.4 beta to see what is coming for Apple Intelligence? Or maybe you don't care because everything else in the generative AI space is much better than what Apple can develop? At the time of publication, we are still waiting for the first beta of iOS 18.4. 6️⃣ Poor Siri. Will she ever grow up? 7️⃣ Apple made a lot of money in the last quarter; here is some proof. Services revenues continue to increase steadily, but iPhone sales are down, Mac is up, iPad is up, and wearables are meh.

🚧 Special projects

1️⃣ This week, I completed the creation of my French blog. I wrote a few blog posts to test the visual theme and define the proper categories. It's all good. I guess it fits well with Louie Mantia's philosophy that he explains in “Make a damn website” instead of relying on a platform just for sharing thoughts? 2️⃣ My other project of learning to use Elements, a web editor, is going slow, at the pace of watching videos on YouTube according to their release schedule. I should do more. 😔

"It’s worth thinking about not just how little effort it takes to get started with an app, web app, or web service. But how much effort it always takes for you to migrate elsewhere when it turns out to be shittier than they originally advertised." — Louie Mantia

📱 Apps & Services

1️⃣ I bought SnapMotion to snap the exact frame out of a video. One example is writing articles about Apple's keynote and product announcements, where I want to take snapshots during the streaming but never get the right one. Now it will be possible. Another use case is to look for an animation frame-by-frame that often reveals details we cannot see live or using another tool. SnapMotion, in a way, offers a way to save bookmarks of video sections with the Snaps tab, which is very handy. 2️⃣ Readwise, the web service for reading RSS feeds and saving text highlights, published an article summarizing recent additions and updates to their offerings. It's pretty impressive and, as usual, quite overwhelming. I'm still paying for Readwise but only using the text highlight archive. Their reader is quite powerful and feature-packed compared to Inoreader, but I'm still not fond of the design. That said, like many other services, they added generative AI article summarization, and I think this is something Inoreader should consider adding, too. And the conversation with text highlights is a clever use of AI. 3️⃣ Adam Engst wrote an article about why he still prefers Grammarly over Apple Intelligence. As a paid subscriber myself, I completely agree with his take. Apple Intelligence is not writer-friendly at all. Grammarly is so much better integrated into the writing experience than Apple Intelligence. I find this ironic because Grammarly is a third-party application, and Apple usually offers better integrations since they control the whole software stack. One downside or irritating issue with Grammarly is the iterative nature of its correction suggestions engine. The final version might take four or five corrections to one phrase involving a change to the same portion. I use Writing Tools a few times a week but for very short text, like when posting to Micro.blog. 3️⃣ Craft now supports the DeepSeek R1 local model without an internet connection. I tested it but returned to ChatGPT’s model. 4️⃣ Inoreader now supports Bluesky, so we can add search results or follow users from an RSS reader. How cool is that? 5️⃣ Speaking of Bluesky, Flashes, a photography-only app based on Bluesky, is coming soon. In other words, by using Flashes, Bluesky sort of becomes like what Instagram used to be in its early days. How cool is that?

📺 YouTube

1️⃣ I want to play this game: Tiny Glade. It seems to be relaxing. It reminds me of TownScaper, but it is much more sophisticated. But I know I /will waste too much time on this. 2️⃣ This is a cool video about many of the scenes of The Silo. I like to see all the places without any humans, only with background noises. It leaves a lot of space for imagination. It's a bit spooky. 3️⃣ I'm still fascinated by Nothing, the company, and their actions (A recent video).

💎 Miscellaneous

1️⃣ I got my first mechanical keyboard this week, a Keychron, and I love it. I didn't understand all the enthusiasm around mechanical keyboards until this week. I should have known better because we had that kind of keyboard when I started studying computer science. I vividly remember IBM "clicky" keyboards with TN3270 monitors. If you look carefully and are old enough, you'll see that this Keychron keyboard resembles the Commodore 64’s. I didn't notice until I started playing with it. 2️⃣ DeepSeek is kicking asses. As good as most advanced ChatGPT models, DeekSeek uses a model that requires a fraction of what ChatGPT 4o took for its development and training. Plus, running the model requires much less CPU and RAM. On top of all that, everything is open source, free to use and reuse! No wonder why NVIDIA shares plunged 17% on Monday, January 27th. Apple's approach to on-device processing might prove to be a good strategy, after all. 3️⃣ According to Reddit, I’m supposed to celebrate my fifteen years on Reddit. 4️⃣ The Core Intuition podcast is over. Sixteen years of podcast episodes are now up for archives. I wasn't an avid listener because I rarely listen to podcasts. But the shows I listened to were good, and most brought thoughtful moments and discussions. It's sad to see that go. Manton shares that after a period of reflection, he felt that something had to change, including how he manages Micro.blog and his time. Sixteen years is a long streak in today's world.

🔮 Looking forward

1️⃣ As a Canadian, I'm looking forward to seeing and probably experiencing the negative consequences of the unjustified tariffs from the white house clique on Canadian goods. Those tariffs are unwarranted and based on false assumptions from the orange clown at the White House.

I wish you a great week! ✌️ 🇺🇦 🇨🇦💪🏻